How to add Posten Norge tracking numbers to the tracking app using AutoRemote and Tasker

My latest Tasker creation is fairly simple, and fairly niche in that it’s only really useful to Norwegians, but I’m hoping that just posting the idea will inspire others to check their own local postal and courier services and see if something similar can be done.

Either way, it’s quite simple. Posten Norge, which is the Norwegian postal system, has a tracking app available for various platforms- including Android. I sent them an email some days ago to ask if there is any way to add tracking numbers to the app using Android intents, and got a reply back today that it’s possible using a simply URL in the following format:

postenno://track/#

Where # is the tracking number.

This means that it’s possible to add tracking numbers using Tasker, by using the Browse URL action. There are a lot of different creations you can make with this, but I wanted it for one specific reason: adding numbers from my computer. Queue AutoRemote!

What I did was to create a new profile in Tasker, choose AutoRemote as the context, select event behavior, and specify “track=:=” as the filter. This means that whenever I send an AutoRemote message in the format “track=:=number goes here”, the number will be available to the profile’s task in the forum of %arcomm. The task I attached to this profile contains only a single action, Browse URL, with the following URL specified:

postenno://track/%arcomm

So, if I send a message like “track=:=123456” to my phone, it will add “123456” to the tracking app. I already have both the Chrome AR plugin and Gtalk set up to be able to send AutoRemote message, not to mention my iPad if I want that, so it was easy configuring those to work with this. Now I can select, right click, and use AutoRemote to send tracking numbers straight from Chrome on my PC to the tracking app on my phone.

Like I said, this is only really directly usable for Norwegians, but I wanted to share the idea more than anything else. For this to work it does require that the tracking service (or app) you use allow for adding numbers from external apps, be it intents, URLs, or whatever. I was lucky that it was so easy to do it with this app, and that might not be the case for other tracking apps.

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About the Author

Andreas Ødegård was an associate editor at Pocketables. He’s more interested in aftermarket (and user created) software and hardware than chasing the latest gadgets and tends to stick with his choice of device for a long time as a result of that. Currently that includes an iPad mini and a Samsung Galaxy S II.

Mike

Good idea, next step, parsing emails from , extract the number and add it automatically.

Provided you use a decent MUA, that’s easily done.

Andreas Ødegård

Indeed, I did consider it. I just don’t track enough packages for it to be worth the hassle